Doctor Who season 12: Could Pearl Mackie return now, or later on?

At the moment, trying to get a whole lot of scoop all about Doctor Who season 12 is extremely difficult. Why? It has to do a little bit with it not even airing until 2020! There’s no pressing need to just hand out a flurry of updates — instead, what we’re getting in the news cycle is speculation and questioning about A) who could come back and B) what could happen moving forward.

For the sake of this story, let’s hover over the first question: Who could come back? Is a Pearl Mackie return a possibility? Out of all of the things the series could do, this is actually a reprisal that makes some sense. Mackie’s character of Bill was reasonably short-lived as a Companion, with her spending a year with Peter Capaldi before his exit and the complete reinvention of the show with Jodie Whittaker. She represents a special period of the show’s life, but it also doesn’t seem like Doctor Who is keen to revisit that, or anything else from the past, in the near future. For most of season 11, it felt like showrunner Chris Chibnall’s goal was to bring the series to as many new fans as possible. That meant very little reliance on old characters or monsters, though the Daleks did come back for the New Year’s Special at the start of the year.

Think about things this way — if Chibnall spent a full season before bringing back a familiar villain, it’s going to take a good bit longer to bring back a former cast member. For the record, it doesn’t seem like Mackie is ready to come back anyway — just take a look at what she had to say on the subject to the Radio Times:

“I think I need more time, to be honest. I still feel quite close to Bill. I need to miss her before I want to play her again, you know? … I think I need to [do that] and find a way to add to her story before wanting to go back and play her again.

“I was happy to work with [Twelfth Doctor] Peter [Capaldi], and to do just one series was a gift.”

For some more video thoughts on the Doctor Who – New Year’s Special, be sure to check out our review for what transpired at the bottom of this article! On the other side of checking this out, remember to subscribe to CarterMatt on YouTube for more.

Our hope is that maybe in a year or two, Doctor Who could at least consider some sort of reunion with former cast members similar in some way to the 50th-anniversary special. Rather than focus just on former Doctors, though, we’d like to see something that celebrated mostly former Companions and their contributions to the show. Without their rapport with the Doctors and the chemistry that formed, it’s hard to imagine that this show would be anywhere near the same success story that it is today.

Do you want to see Mackie, or some other former cast member, back down the road?

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